Edward IV: The Real-Life Robert Baratheon

We remember that Robert Baratheon was close to the Stark, Lannister, and Arryn families. Like Robert Baratheon in “Game of Thrones,” the English King Edward IV was close to some noble families. As the noble families of the Middle Ages established their interests, the rivalry between them went back and forth (including hatred!). But in general, there was a lot of distrust between people because of this constant competition for land, power, influence, and marital relations (mainly). Unfortunately, just as in George R.R. Martin’s story, after the death of King Edward IV, the battle between the power-hungry factions became incredibly fierce.

King Edward IV of England had relationships with four groups of people (very similar to Robert Baratheon in “Game of Thrones”):

• his brothers George and Richard: similarly, there are Robert Baratheon’s brothers Renly and Stannis.
• his mother’s family, Neville: the Nevilles were considered one of England’s most essential and wealthy families at the time. This family included the ‘kingmaker,’ Richard Warwick, some 20 years older than Edward IV, a historical figure we’ll discuss more (because he played many political games). Warwick was wealthy and influential enough to put Edward IV on the throne. A similarly wealthy and influential family in Game of Thrones is that of Lord Frey, the unsympathetic senior who engineered the so-called “Red Wedding.”
• his wife’s (Elizabeth Woodville) family is similar to the Lannisters. The Woodvilles were a large family whom Warwick, the ‘kingmaker’, hated to death because, he said, they had infiltrated the King’s court by taking advantage of Edward and Elizabeth’s secret marriage and had monopolized the court marriage market. All these reasons mattered more or less; in fact, Warwick had hated Queen Elizabeth’s father ever since he had been investigating him in a piracy case.
• finally, William Hastings was Edward’s companion and most loyal friend. He had begun as a squire for York House as a boy. He was very popular, brave, and much admired. It was Hastings who controlled the King’s entrances, so he had a special influence in the kingdom that made him very powerful. King Edward IV had great confidence in William.

Edward IV made little effort to reconcile these rival factions that were shaking the peace of the kingdom so that by 1483, several important events took place:

• Warwick (‘the kingmaker’) and, indirectly, George, Duke of Clarence (Edward IV’s brother), murdered the queen’s father and brother (Elizabeth Woodville). Warwick had also taken steps to have the queen’s mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, arrested on charges of witchcraft. But in Jacquetta’s case, he didn’t go through with it.

Coat of Arms of Elizabeth Woodville

• King Edward IV indirectly murdered Warwick and his brother George, which sparked a storm between Edward and his mother (Cecily Neville, Duchess of York). Cecily even threatened her son that he was not legitimate, so the throne was not rightfully his in the first place.
• Elizabeth Woodville and her (huge) family were indeed not fond of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, especially after the murder of her father (Richard Woodville, 1st Earl of Rivers) and brother (John Woodville, 2nd Earl of Rivers). It would not be difficult to imagine, therefore, that the Woodvilles assisted King Edward IV in convicting and executing the King’s brother George, who we now know drowned in a barrel of wine (as he chose to do).
• And, of course, Richard III, presumably for fear of the same Woodville, kidnapped, it is said, Edward IV’s boys, the heirs to the throne, and locked them in the Tower of London, from which the boys never came out alive. Or dead. Because they were never heard from again. This situation was at the root of the legitimacy and succession crisis that somewhat resembles the events of “Game of Thrones”: Ned Stark begins investigating Joffrey Lannister’s legitimacy, setting off a chain of events that cannot be stopped.

So there are similarities between Robert Baratheon and the English King Edward IV.

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